Eluding Nirvana (The Dark Evoke Series Book 2) (13 page)

“Kady,
” she interrupted me with a stern and urgent tone, a tone very un-Brittany-like. “He forced me up against the Goddamn wall, I tried to push him away when he grabbed my ass, but he wouldn’t budge. He told me it was a thrill to live in the moment, to do things which should be forbidden. I wanted to tell you, Kady, I really did. It’s been killing me keeping it to myself, but he told me that it would be useless because you would always believe him. Please, Kady, you have to believe me.”

Stan
ding in the center of the kitchen, the void in my skull was filled by her echoing words. My body shook, my breathing was ragged and my head was pounding, as I unintentionally allowed myself to be devoured by so many haywire emotions. “I–I have to go,” I muttered in a daze, ended the call and dropped it on the unit as though it had just burned me.

Each anxious breath, alongside m
y mouth gaping, caused my lips to wither. The walls, the floor, everything around me faded into oblivion. Liam and my sister? Brittany and Liam? No. It was lies. It had to be.

The
degree of my denial came to run short. I sensed and familiarized myself with the intensifying rage and collective emotions bubbling and steaming in my body––confusion, misunderstanding––I felt cheated and betrayed. I didn’t want to believe it; you name me one person in this lifetime who wants to believe that the two people they trust more than anything in the world would participate in some immoral, treacherous act such as that.

Blame
, however, seeped and trickled through my veins melding with my upsurge of adrenaline. I blamed myself. If Brittany was telling the truth, then I was certain more than anything in the world, that it was me that had forced him into someone else’s arms––me and my Goddamn insolent habits. Why didn’t I ever listen to him? I should have treated him better.

Trudging through a conflict-ridden storm,
it was impossible to focus on one particular emotion and work through it before diffusing the next. Everything, the feelings, my reaction, along with the words of my sister, obstructed my natural ability to neutralize each emotion and come out the other side with reason, and a greater understanding of the situation as it stood.

Next thing I knew, an intense
sensation of hurt overcame me, but with hurt should come pain, right? Yet there was no pain; there was no shock, nothing to make me feel human. It was as though my brain was registering the hurt, but it couldn’t register that the hurt wasn’t physical, the hurt was in my heart. I was hurting emotionally and on some inexplicable level, I didn’t and couldn’t deal with it. I didn’t know how to. I just wanted it to end.

My heart was shattering, and in a way, I needed to feel that way, too.

I have no idea why, but in a daze, I yanked open the dishwasher which had just finished its cycle. I just needed something…something to help me focus––something to concentrate on and help defog my mind. I needed to somehow send a message to my brain, a message where it could decipher that my hurt
was
due to the act of physical pain.

As bizarre as it sounds,
I ran on my pure instinct. An instinct which had never presented itself before.

One of the middle-sized silver spoons was
fetched from the washer, and even with a cloth shielding my fingers, I could still feel the heat of the metal scorching through the weave of the fabric. When I braced my right foot up onto one of the barstools, I closed my eyes while heaving each labored and shaky breath, and tossed back my head. My arm felt as weighty as lead, so I let it drop and called out in pain as the hot steel pressed against my inner thigh. The natural reaction to withdraw from the heat of the implement was fought against with every ounce of strength I had. Every muscle in my face bunched together and I felt warm tears falling from my eyes to trickle down my cheeks.

I concentrated on nothing more a
s I slipped into my own little world, my own very dark place in my psyche where there were no walls holding me captive, no misunderstandings and most importantly, no blame. With each few seconds that passed by, the wounded flesh beneath, and surrounding the hot steel, which lay against my inner thigh, became less sensitive. I was becoming familiarized with it, and in that moment, I was free. I was getting what I needed alongside what I deserved. I needed that time to escape into my mind; I needed that moment of discomfort to bring me a form of detachment. I needed to fight through the form of physical pain, to quell my emotional pain.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

By the time my eyelids had fluttered open, Liam’s briefcase was already set on the dining table and he was charging toward me like a bat out of Hell. Nonetheless, I pressed that slowly cooling metal further and further into my skin, desperately seeking complete numbness, not physically, but emotionally. And I was nearly there. I was only a moment away from emotional numbness. I just needed that moment, that one measly moment.

“Kady?”
Liam shouted in a bid to get my attention as he rounded the island in haste. I watched as his eyes fell onto my right thigh and the back of the silver spoon which was flattened against it. Embarrassment should have bred from the situation, but I was consumed in the moment of knowing what I needed, that I just didn’t care. I was helping myself because only I knew what I needed.

Control.

Wrenching my hand away from my leg as his forceful hand circled my wrist, I protested during his attempt. “No, no. It’s mine; I only need a minute, just a minute, please––” I writhed, sounding like a pathetic crack addict begging for her latest fix, but I was shameless. During the months, I felt everything had been taken away from me, some for good reason, I could understand that. But living in the constant fear and anxiety which I felt while inside that house as I strove not to push my boyfriend’s buttons, along with the level I went to in a bid to make certain I had a constant reminder not to fuck up, and the feelings which had stirred inside me, whether it be due to feeling like a prisoner under my partner’s hold, or because of the words and actions of disloyalty that my sister had entrusted me with, I no longer felt in control of my life.

And I hadn’t for a while.

With that small circle of torrid steel on my body, I had regained what I felt was no longer my right. I could
control
the heat by having it hover above my surface and feel the relaxing warmth, or hold it down tight and allow the intense burn to take hold of me. I could
control
the duration, the way in which it was placed, the area which would be taken next, and how much area would be affected. It was mine, and mine alone.

“Kady, give me the fuck
ing spoon!”

“No,” it was a futile attempt to pull away and fight him off, but I tried anyway with a flailing of my head
as tears of desperation and the need to have him understand, took ahold of me. “It’s mine. It’s mine. It’s mi––”

Clattering upon the tile sounded as the steel spoon was relinquished from my grip, and
my head whipped ferociously to my right as the back of Liam’s heavy, authoritative hand collided with the side of my face. I stumbled and fell backward, my lower back cracking onto the title, the legs of the barstool griping before being kicked over. Cradling the side of my face, my cheekbone throbbed and I was certain my eyeball was going to explode. Yet, I found that the shock of his assault completed the sequence that I craved, the progression that I had sought after the initial control: shock and unresponsiveness. He halted my intention to gradually seek that mental state, but the shock of his strike, was just another method to free  myself from the clouded, overrunning feelings in my head.

I wa
s literally shocked into reason…I was shocked into numbness.

From the floor, I tipped my head back to peer up at the man which was looming over me with an array of differing emotions in his eyes. He raked his hand back in his slicked brown hair and lowered himself into a crouch. “Kady,” my name was a rapid sound journeying on a
conflicted gasp. The back of my left hand, which was cradling my face, was encased by his warmth when he settled his hand above it. Lips curled with worry and eyes thawed with apologetic assertions. “I am so, so sorry, baby. I don’t know why…” his voice was lost to silence while he hung his head and slowly removed his hand from my cheek.

“Did you do it?” I asked,
breaking the deafening silence and feeling somewhat serene and levelheaded.

His head shot up. “Did I do what?”

Blinking slowly, for that brief moment, I felt as though nothing could harm me. I felt blissfully at peace, totally uncaring…detached. I just wanted honesty. “Did you make a pass at Brittany on Halloween?”

I s
tudied the crumple of his brow and the slight presence of his laugh-lines as his face tensed into a perplexed scowl. “What? No, of course I didn’t. I would never do that to you.” His opposite hand lifted to comb the hair back from my face and set it behind my shoulders. “What would make you think such a thing? What’s been said?”

The screaming red blemish on my inner thigh was
stealing my attention. When my thumb grazed around and over the area of the wound, after falling from my face, tingles shot through my body. The flesh was still heated, and in the light the wounded surface appeared to shine.

“Brittany
called,” I began mindlessly, staring into a void that was becoming my life. “She told me you made a move on her. That it was you that locked me in the bedroom the following morning. She said you near enough forced your tongue in her mouth.” I stopped to sniffle, my rapt attention remaining on my leg. “She said you told her that if she told me, I’d never believe her anyway.”

In my peripheral vision, I saw cautious, gentle fingers approach my own on my thigh. I should have winced when his fingertips skimmed over the ugly red mark, but I felt…
restful, near untouchable. Things felt and appeared more vivid.

“And because of what was said, you decided to do this to yourself?” his tone was borderline on pitiful, but I knew differently. I knew what it was to me, I knew how it helped. I didn’t think Liam would ever come to understand the extent of how something like this
could
help. Some would call it attention seeking. That’s not me; I had never been an attention seeker. To me, it was an escape. It was a way to have control over a situation. To me, as the temperature of that metal began to gradually lessen, the overwhelming collection of thoughts in my mind lessened, too. Like a graph. The pain is the peak, it starts out high, but it pulls you back from the anger and rage once you become familiar with it, and as the temperature is reduced, the compressed sphere of burdening emotions is unraveled and clarity, levelheadedness and detachment takes place.

This was my
form of emotional numbness.

This was my
anchor.

When I failed to answer his question in knowing that he wouldn’t understand, he muttered, “Kady. Can you see how Brittany’s words have affected us today? Can you see what has happened? Because of her, a line has been crossed, a l
ine that we never thought…” wavering, he inhaled deeply and exhaled loudly through his nose before resuming. “Kady, it’s nothing but lies. I love you, but I’m sorry, I’m not going to allow anyone to worm their way between us and rip us apart, or turn us into people that we don’t recognize.”

I heard his words, but they were just that: words––a raspy, deep voice blanketing everything in my mind and holding me there in reality before I slipped
further into emotional stillness. I had to do this. I had to do it now while I was still in my realm of detachment.

“Could you please pass me my cell, Liam? It’s on the island.”

When he came to squat down before me again, he handed me the handset and asked what I was doing.

“I’m drawing an end to this,” I
mechanically replied.

“Did you tell her about the move?” he asked a
s I pulled up my contact list.

I just wanted to
overcome the hurdle that was standing in front of me, so I shook my head and muttered ‘no’ while I selected ‘little sis’, in my contacts then selected the option to send a text message. I typed everything which needed to be said:

I can’t believe you would stoop so low.

I’m done.

We’
re done.

I have no sister
.

The following morning I woke to an empty bed. My head pulsated while my eyes felt tight and raw. For the first time in years, I’d cried myself to sleep. The recollections of the crazy times I had with Brittany, all the sad times and downright annoying times had my grief-stricken body weeping harder. In spite of everything, she was my sister.

I remembered her
tiny hand clutching my pinkie finger the day Mom and Dad brought her tiny innocent body home from the hospital, and each and every pinkie promise we made to each other as we grew older. I remembered her laughing when I pulled silly faces behind our parents back and the very first fight I got into, as I stood protecting her from some bully in school.

Brittany was my right arm.
Nevertheless, she had crossed a line as my sibling, and I hacked her out of my life because of it.